


The Drive Back

by TriumphShouts



Series: The Morning of the Void [1]
Category: True Detective
Genre: Companionable Snark, Friendship, M/M, Slow Burn, Suicidal Themes/Mentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-01
Updated: 2014-04-01
Packaged: 2018-01-17 19:24:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1399591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriumphShouts/pseuds/TriumphShouts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Follows on directly from S01E08 of True Detective. What we all want: what happens next?</p><p>Marty is trying to hold himself and the pieces of his partner together, with orange juice and sunlight and pills of pastel colors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Drive Back

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [The Drive Back 驶入归途](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1417726) by [Virgil (alucard1771)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alucard1771/pseuds/Virgil)



The drive back to Marty’s house is the most silent one he’s ever had with Rust in the car. Rust doesn’t wax lyrical on the nature of the universe, just occasionally makes tiny, pained noises when the car jolts over a bump. Marty doesn’t say ‘you’re staying with me’ so Rust can’t refuse. At this point though, Marty suspects Rust would agree to anything, that’s how out of it he is.

When it comes time to get out of the car, Rust sits so still and so silent that for a single, heart-dropping moment, Marty thinks he’s dead. Expired in the car somewhere between Lafayette General and 77 Pearmont drive. Somewhere between the night sky and the light of the streetlamps. Then Rust turns towards the open car door, looks at Marty’s outstretched hand like it’s offering something he doesn’t understand. Maybe it is incomprehensible, Marty allows. He’s never hated a man as much as he hated Rust, but he’s never been as close to anyone as he is to Rust right now. Somehow, Rust leaning on him and shuffling painstakingly slowly, they get to the door, into the hall, into the bedroom. Marty’s only got the one bed, and he’ll be fucked if he’s letting Rust sleep on the couch after all this.

Rust rolls onto his back, the lines of his face showing how much this little escape plan has cost him. He speaks before Marty can, slow and careful, like he always is, but his voice is out of it. Marty has to lean closer to catch it, Rust’s voice barely above a mumble.

“Thanks”

Marty is momentarily stunned – he can’t remember a time when Rust had thanked anybody for anything, let alone him. He gets the feeling behind it though - it’s not just a thanks for the ride. Rust predictably denies him the comeback by immediately falling asleep, every muscle in his body finally relaxing. Marty’s never seen someone as fucking tense and strung out as Rust, and it’s really odd to see that tension finally dissipate for once. Draping the blanket over the man’s sleeping form quickly, Marty turns away. It feels wrong somehow, to look. Like he hasn’t been given permission.

Marty ends up sleeping on the floor of the bedroom – better to be embarrassed about it in the morning than let Rust do some idiot thing like rip his stiches open, or get up and run off into the night. Exhausted from the trip and his own medication, Marty falls quickly into a dreamless slumber. A small mercy from an otherwise uncaring universe.

***

The morning brings orange juice and eggs and a disturbing lack of coffee. They’re both banned from caffeine and alcohol until further notice – Marty is not looking forward to enforcing that particular rule with Rust. He spends ten minutes finding and disposing of all the alcohol in the house before Rust is awake. He doesn’t doubt that man would be able to find a thimbleful of whiskey in the desert.

The hospital had rung last night after their little escape, none to happy about Rust’s disappearance. Marty had soothed them with promises to make sure he took it easy, and there was a nurse coming at the end of the week to take Rust’s stiches out. To be honest, Marty was pretty sure he detected a note of relief in their voices, like they were glad to see Rust go. Not surprising. Most people were glad to see Rust go, and that’s without the life-changing trauma and heavy pain medication. Marty wondered how long it might take for him to become that person, eager to move Rust on. 

He refuses to bring Rust breakfast, no matter how far gone he is on this mother-hen thing. Rust sleeps until eleven, then Marty hears him staggering into the bathroom. Just as Marty is about to go check on him, he emerges.  
“You look like horse shit” Marty tells him frankly. Rust flips him off without looking. After he’s sat at Marty’s tiny table, he croaks out a reply. “I blend in nicely with your décor, then”  
Marty smiles a little, despite himself, and pushes over a plate of food. Rust stares at it for a moment, that flat look on his face that Marty remembers hating. Now it seems more empty, less like Rust is judging the universe and more like he’s remembering it exists. 

“They’re called eggs” Marty says sarcastically, wanting a response, a little of the old Rustin Cohle. As if Rust knows that, he puts a forkful in his mouth and answers around them.

“They used to be eggs”. 

Marty takes a drink of his orange juice and wishes for the third time that morning that it was coffee. They sit there, silent in Marty’s kitchen, the sun streaming in through the dusty window. It seems almost surreal to be here now. These bodies of theirs have been in such dark places, have been through such dark things. Marty looks at Rust and remembers his blood spilling into the dirt of Carcosa and can’t reconcile that with being here. Sitting on a shitty plastic chair and eating scrambled eggs. Maybe that was always Rust’s problem, that he was made to live in those dark places and never quite fit in the light.

“They’re dropping by your meds this afternoon” Marty tells him. Because Marty doesn't dare leave Rust alone. He doesn't say it, but Rust probably hears it anyway. Rust shrugs, a small, tense movement. Nothing in it tells Marty what he needs to know, what he wants to know. 

“How long you gonna sit there and stare at me?” Rust asks, his usual charming self. Marty clutches at annoyance instinctively. He knows how to deal with Rust on that level.

“You’re sitting in my fucking kitchen, I guess I can look where I like.” He gets up, puts some toast on for something to do. It’s suddenly too intimate here, too close.

“I guess you can” Rust responds slowly, his words with that familiar feeling of inevitability. “You can look where you want in your own kitchen. Question is, why am I here.” He doesn’t say it with a question in his tone, and Marty doesn’t treat it like one. Rust knows why you’re doing something before you do, he doesn’t need to ask. Whether he’s trying to get a rise out of Marty or he’s just poking to see what happens, Marty doesn’t need this.

“Well, the stab wound, days in a coma and massive internal bleeding might have something to do with it.” Rust isn’t the only one that can talk around an issue. “Now, if your meaning is more existential, then I’d have to tell you I don’t know why any of us is here, and it’s too fucking early for your rhetorical questions.” He’s on familiar ground with this. Rust says something philosophical and just this side of crazy, Marty tells him to shut up and tries not to understand it. This is how they function. Or how they used to function. Marty’s not quite sure how they fit together anymore, or if they even can.

***

Rust goes back to bed, sleeps most of the day away. A nurse that introduces herself as Vera delivers his medication just as the sun starts to dip – she insists on seeing Rust so Marty lets her into the bedroom. Satisfied her patient isn’t dead, she hands Marty the bottles. 

“This is his dosage instructions” She passes over a neat handwritten note “No alcohol, no caffeine. Try and get him to keep the smoking to a minimum.” Marty snorts at that and she gives him an unreadable look.

“This is my card. Ring me or the hospital if anything happens.” She drops a stack of pamphlets on the table and closes her leather bag. “These are some grief and trauma counselling options, suicide helplines” She says it matter-of-factly, so quick that it doesn’t hang in the air, a reminder that everything is not ok. Vera turns back at the door, and then:

“I do hope you’ll take care of him, Mr. Hart. I heard what he did, to get in such a bad way” Rust would hate that, Marty thinks. To be absolved of his previous sins in such a way. Violence forgiving violence. But then Vera continues, softer “I’ve had the graveyard shift down there more often than not, and sometimes I’d just watch him starin’ out the window. I never asked what he saw, and he never stopped looking. People that come that close to the edge, come out of that kind of thing… They’re not usually still looking for something. Usually it gives them their answer, one way or another.”

She meets his eyes, and Marty suddenly feels very unprepared for this conversation. “I just hopes he finds some of what he’s lookin’ for, is all.”

Marty stands at the door for a long time after she goes, one of the pill bottles in his hand. In the end he hears Rust moving and that’s why he turns away. He checks the instructions twice and shakes the different pills from their bottles. Pink and yellow and white, soft pastel colours to make them seem safer.  
Marty hands Rust the carefully measured-out pills and a glass of water, and leaves the room. He’ll give him that much, that he doesn’t hover over Rust’s prone form to make sure he talks the pills. He’ll take them or he won’t. Marty’s fighting this strange dual battle, knowing there’s nothing he can ultimately do if Rust decides to die, and doing his damn best to make sure it doesn’t happen anyway. He does go and hide the bottles, half-guiltily. 

Marty eats a microwave dinner in front of the TV, in a vain attempt to grab back some normalcy. He goes to see if Rust want anything, but he’s asleep again, still and pale against the sheets. Before he knows what he’s doing, Marty’s fingers find Rust’s wrist, settle there until they feel a pulse. The moment stretches out, and Marty doesn’t know what he’s doing. Maybe he’s never really known what he was doing.

 

He sleeps on the floor again that night.

**Author's Note:**

> This hopefully will be a part of my ongoing True Detective series - alternating fics between Marty and Rust's viewpoint. Feedback is good, and you should join the TD fandom! You get to write this kind of self-indulgent meta-wanky fic and have it fit with the canon themes. :D


End file.
